Competition has become so intense that, in some industries,
"simply doing your best does not cut it anymore because your
best can be mimicked too quickly and easily," says Faye Brill,
president of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals
in Alexandria, Virginia. "A company's competitive
advantage can be eroded more quickly now than ever
before."

To protect your edge, you've got to know what the
competition is doing. The key? Competitive intelligence. It may
sound like something out of a James Bond movie, but "in a
business setting, competitive intelligence means taking
information, analyzing it and recommending strategies to help
companies become and remain competitive in their individual
marketplaces," says Brill.

Competitive intelligence can help you define your market, avoid
wasting time and money on projects that others have already tried
and abandoned, and outmaneuver your competitors on a variety of
fronts. Effective competitive intelligence is a formal process that
goes well beyond traditional market research. "It's about
understanding all the external forces that might impact your
company," Brill explains. Those include competing
organizations, suppliers, unions, customers, environmental issues,
government regulations and more.

"Ask yourself what you need to know and who has the
answer," Brill says. "There are so many possible sources
of information. You have to gather the pieces and fit them together
like a puzzle."

Sources of information include competitors (check out their
brochures and other marketing materials), customers, vendors,
people in similar industries who are not direct competitors, trade
shows, college professors, professional associations and the
media.

Your goal, Brill stresses, is to carefully and accurately
observe what others are doing in the marketplace so you can plan
your competitive posture. And though the term "competitive
intelligence" has a cloak-and-dagger ring to it, the
information can and should be gathered ethically.

"It is always unethical and generally illegal to try to get
a company's proprietary information," says Brill. She adds
that internal documents often do not give you the information you
need anyway. You may manage to obtain a copy of a competitor's
five-year plan, but if the plan isn't working or they're
not following it, it won't do you any good. What's more,
decisions based on incorrect information can be expensive
mistakes.

An acceptable and fair competitive intelligence method is
reverse engineering, which is the process of examining a product on
the market to determine how it was made and to identify its
competitive advantages. Also, Brill says, when you're talking
to your sources, be honest about who you are and the company
you're with. "We encourage people not to lie and say, for
example, that they're just doing research," she says.
"People will still talk to you if you tell them the
truth."

Whatever approach you choose, be sure it's one you are
comfortable with. "If you do something to obtain information
and you can look your family in the eye and tell them you did it,
it's probably ethical," says Brill.

Once you have the information, be prepared to act on it. "A
lot of people gather data and it's meaningless because it's
not tied to a strategy," Brill says. "You have to ask
yourself, 'If I get this information, so what?' Information
has to have some sort of action tied to it, or it isn't worth
getting."